Wednesday, September 12, 2007

Bawk!

Check it out!

The monster on the right is Diddy's, but check out the egg on the left. Someone else has been getting busy in the nesting box! I'm not sure who, but I'm so excited. I can't wait until we don't have to buy eggs at the grocery store anymore. Even the free-range organic eggs that we get at the store aren't anywhere near as yellow or flavorful as the eggs these girls lay for us.

Another great benefit of having chickens - they eat our leftovers! Owen throws half his morning bagel on the floor? No problem! The chickens don't mind a little grit with their meals. Last night I made pasta with cherry tomatoes and zucchini and the kids ate about half of what I served them. I stuck their bowls out in the coop and when I went back out this morning they were picked clean! It's awesome, and I know that the more tasty stuff they eat, the better their eggs will be.

I picked another full bowl of cherry tomatoes this morning, and I'm terrified of how many green ones are on the vine. Anybody have any recommendations as to what to do with hundreds of cherry tomatoes? I need help!!!

And now, I'm headed back to Ravelry. I know that it's extremely annoying to read about how great Ravelry is when you know it will be months before you get in, but I just can't help myself. I wasn't expecting to be as impressed as I am. It's amazing! Before I was like, "why the heck would I want to catalog my stash? I can do that in an Excel spreadsheet if I really feel like it." But now, I can't wait to photograph and catalog everything. It will be so useful - I tend to buy yarn for projects and then forget I have it because it's so difficult to dig through everything. And forget about cataloging it in Excel...it's not going to happen. However, in Ravelry all the ball band info for the yarns is already entered and I can just log how many skeins I have and in what colors. Next time I have a slot free to add a design to my pattern line I can go in and remind myself of all those yarns I bought months ago with a great project in mind. Awesome!

It's also very interesting to see who is knitting my designs, what the ratings are and see pictures of people's FOs. It's not always easy to take (like, why in the heck did that design only get 4 out of 5 stars?), but it's great market research.

7 Comments:

I still haven't gotten around to photographing my stash for Ravelry; I planned to during my recent 2 weeks off work, but never did. Hopefully, I'll get to it one day soon; it really will be a helpful tool!

I'll bet you got mad if you didn't get straight As in school, too! I haven't knitted your designs, but I can tell you that I only give five stars to designs that are not only perfect, but perfect for me. Which lets out a lot of fabulous designs, because they use a technique I don't like or are designed slightly differently than I prefer. To me, four stars is truly excellent--just not designed to my idiosyncratic specifications.

My kids just loved the garbage to eggs concept. We fed the chickens everything....the compost pile was in the coop, so we just dumped it and they ate. They loved it when I turned the compost and all the bugs came scurrying out!!!!

You do know that egg production will go down in the fall and winter? It's a sun thing. The less sun the fewer eggs. It'll start picking up again at Vernal equinox.

I love having chickens. They are such fun to watch as they go about their busy little lives, plus they give you beautiful, delicious eggs every day. You must have an Easter Egger or Ameraucana to get that nice green egg.It's not nice to tease about Ravelry; I suspect it'll be next year before I get invited.

About Me

Welcome to the wild & wooly world of knitwear designer Chrissy Gardiner. I'm a mom of two who spends as much time as possible knitting and designing knitting patterns. I have been published in various books and magazines as well as printing my own pattern line, Gardiner Yarn Works. I published my first book, Toe-Up!, in the summer of 2009. It's about socks, of course!